“Welcome to the Great White Way!” Brooke declares from the
middle of the glowing staircase in Times Square, arms outstretched in a
glamorous convivial gesture. She wants to make a good impression, since she’s
meeting her soon-to-be stepsister for the first time. It’s just too bad that
she shouted her greeting too early, and so gingerly makes her way down the
steps while awkwardly holding her pose, flashes of panic on her face as she
tries not to trip. This early scene in Mistress
America, Noah Baumbach’s new comedy, is a snapshot of the relationship at
its core, one woman looking up to, and yet aware of the flaws of, another. The
difference between the spectacular moments in their minds and the sad realities
bringing them down, between grand intentions and wobbly reality, is mined for
hilarity, but also for great empathy.
These are two women trying to forge their identities in the
crucible of New York City, bound together by nothing more than the impending
marriage of one’s father to the other’s mother. What they make of this new connection
is as funny as it is revealing. The bouncy score (by Luna’s Britta Phillips and
Dean Wareham) motors a comedy of complicated characters, a nicely drawn charmer
gaining sharp insight and quick laughs by creating characters specifically
drawn and deeply felt. Brooke, a sunny 30-year-old, has been living in the city
for several years. The younger is Tracy, a fresh-faced 18, just moved in from
the suburbs to attend college. Tracy is pulled immediately into Brooke’s
magnetic orbit, instantly enamored with a new big sister who personifies
everything she thought life as a young adult in New York should be:
interesting, funny, ambitious, connected, with sharp fashion sense and the
charm to be the life of every party.
Lola Kirke plays Tracy with a look of shy awe, feeling lucky
to have found such a perfect mentor to guide her into a glamorous and
productive adulthood. Taken under the wing of this new friend, she’s led out to
bars, clubs, concerts, and hipster hangouts, even allowed to crash on the couch
in a homey studio apartment hidden illegally in a commercially zoned building.
Creative juices flowing, she begins to write a short story inspired by Brooke,
lovely precocious freshman prose that becomes warm narration throughout. There
we discover the sharp observations Tracy has, the kind Brooke would never stop
to consider about herself. And what a character Brooke is! Played by Greta
Gerwig, who also co-wrote with her Frances
Ha partner Baumbach, she's a bubbly extrovert charging through every
scenario convinced she’s the master of the universe.
She shows up at all the best places, possesses a tremendous
clarity about her goals (she wants to start a restaurant where people can also
shop, and get their haircut, and more), and is eager to invite a younger friend
into her life as a prop (to show off, and to use as support). Is it a real
friendship the women create? Who’s to say? Brooke’s one of those people who
seems to know everyone and be close friends with most of them. Still, the
genius in Gerwig’s performance of boundless energy and daffy quotability (“I don’t
know if you’re a zen master or a sociopath,” she tells a deadpan friend) is her
ability to casually pick holes in Brooke’s façade. She’s desperate to be
considered a success, fills every silence with hollow patter, and mercilessly
observes everyone’s flaws but her own. Her constant movement and talk serves as
a way to throw doubt and insecurities away from herself and on to others.
What Baumbach and Gerwig create is a portrait of a woman who
is a dazzling frazzled idea machine, creative but without good
follow-through. She’s totally lovable, but spiked with off-putting
self-involvement. At one point, she encounters an old high school classmate who
confesses memories of her as a hurtful bully. Brooke nonchalantly confesses she
can’t feel sorry since she doesn’t remember. It’s ice cold, and seemingly
doesn’t impact the rest of her chipper conversation to which she immediately
returns. We follow Brooke and Tracy through a collection of beautifully executed
comic scenarios populated with broad types who quickly become fully fleshed
people whose loves and lives and dreams really matter. The scene with the old
classmate has such an impact because of the instant humanity it observes. We
see how difficult it is to have your self-image interrupted by a view from
outside your head, and how much easier it would be to not let such perspective
cloud your good time.
An endlessly witty confection worth savoring on a
line-by-line basis, the film forges a real and tangible connection to its
characters while sharply observing modern social dynamics. We meet some self-serious college kids (Matthew Shear and Jasmine
Cephas Jones) and bunch of wealthy Connecticut suburbanites (including Michael
Chernus and Heather Lind, who Brooke considers her “nemesis”) as the movie
builds to a lengthy farcical climax. It teases out its casual ideas about
gender politics and income inequality as punchlines roll in rapid waves. But
what’s most satisfying is the patient and casually moving moments that follow,
bringing its unsettled threads together as characters finally must reckon with
the impact of their actions and relationships.
It’s probably Baumbach’s most sweetly affectionate film,
certainly less openly acidic than something like The Squid and the Whale or Greenberg,
though just as cynical in its softer way. The movie allows its characters to be
figures of fun and yet nonjudgmentally free to be who they are. It gets what
it’s like to enjoy someone’s presence, without really buying into the persona
they’re selling, just as surely as it knows the hustle it takes to make a life
for yourself outside the homogenous norm. The movie respects its characters' flaws while allowing them room for potential and growth, and it is all the
sunnier for it. Call it the Gerwig effect. She brings out the best in Baumbach.
With casually beautiful framing and perfectly timed editing (from Sam Levy and
Jennifer Lame, respectively, who were also key Frances Ha collaborators), Baumbach makes Mistress America a light and energetic comedy of dialogue and
manners that manages to draw real and modern emotional truths in the process.
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